A jury of seven men and two women has just read the Apple v. Samsung verdict to a packed courtroom—and it was all bad news for Samsung. The Korean electronics giant has been found to infringe all of Apple's utility patents and all but one of the four design patents asserted, and was ordered to pay $1.05 billion in damages to Apple.

That's less than the $2.75 billion Apple asked for, but still a huge sum. If it holds up on appeal, it will stand as the largest patent verdict of all time. More importantly, it gives Apple a huge leg-up in the corporate patent wars, and immeasurably strengthens the company's negotiating position with regard to the Android phones it is struggling against.

Since Samsung's patent infringement was found to be willful in many cases, the $1.05 billion damages figure could go up. Patent law allows for up to triple damages in cases where infringement is found to be willful, although judges rarely grant that much in additional damages.

Samsung has been the number one seller of smartphones in the U.S. in the past few years, and this verdict will surely alter the balance of power. Apple's ultimate target is Google, which created the Android operating system that runs on Samsung smartphones. Steve Jobs thought Android was a rip-off of Apple products, and vowed to declare "thermonuclear war" on the competing OS, according to his biography.

Now, the world will get a chance to see just what the results of Jobs' promised nuclear attack will be. There's a danger that Samsung products could be kicked off the market following this verdict. However, that decision will have to be made in the coming weeks by U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh, who oversaw the case. Koh has scheduled a hearing on that issue for Sept. 20.

During closing arguments, Apple portrayed Samsung as a enthusiastic copycat that took a shortcut to profits, engaging in a three-month copying spree that piggybacked on the years of hard work Apple witnesses said it took to create the iPhone. Samsung, meanwhile, denied those copying allegations, and accused Apple of being a courtroom bully that refused to compete in the marketplace.

Apple's three utility patents, all found infringed, cover features like double-tapping to zoom and the "bounce back" technology that snaps images back into place. The company's four design patents cover elements like the contours and shape of the iPhone.

The jury also rejected Samsung's arguments that the patents were invalid. Samsung escaped an infringement finding on only one of Apple's patents, a design patent asserted only against two Samsung tablets.

Samsung's counterattack against Apple, using six of its own patents, went nowhere. The jury found that Samsung's patents weren't infringed, and Samsung won't get any of the $422 million it was asking for.

The jury of seven men and two women returned the verdict faster than expected, after just two and a half days of deliberations in the San Jose federal courthouse. The jury was given access to one of each of the accused phones, which could be turned on and used, but did not have Internet access. At the end of the day, they had to fill out a complex 20-page jury verdict form [PDF] that includes hundreds of individual patent and trademark accusations against each company. Closing arguments took place late Tuesday.

The case, which began with opening arguments on July 31, has been an unusually tense one, with US District Judge Lucy Koh often sniping at lawyers on both sides.

The verdict was originally reported as $1.051 billion, but there were "inconsistencies" in the jury form, and the jury spent about an hour working those out. That lowered the final damages amount by $2.4 million, for reported total of $1,049,343,540.

Below is a copy of the verdict form, which the jury used to make its ruling.

The verdict follows closely after a South Korean court decided that both companies infringed each others' patents, a ruling seen to favor Samsung. However, the US battle is the centerpiece of the worldwide legal battle between the two smartphone companies, and is by far the most significant.

In addition to patent and trade dress claims, Apple also made antitrust and breach-of-contract claims, saying that Samsung was using its industry-standard patents in an illegal way. Those claims failed, but were a tiny part of Apple's case.

This win also strengthens Apple's hand in a newer lawsuit [PDF] filed against Samsung in the same court. That lawsuit, scheduled to go to trial in 2014, accuses a newer generation of phones of infringing Apple patents and trademarks. Apple's position is that Samsung has continued to make illegal copies of its product, releasing no less than 17 phones in the last part of 2011 that infringe Apple patents, including various Galaxy II models, the Galaxy Nexus, the Stratosphere, and others.

"The mountain of evidence presented during the trail showed that Samsung’s copying went far deeper than even we knew. The lawsuits between Apple and Samsung were about much more than patents or money. They were about values. At Apple, we value originality and innovation and pour our lives into making the best products on earth. We make these products to delight our customers, not for our competitors to flagrantly copy. We applaud the court for finding Samsung’s behavior willful and for sending a loud and clear message that stealing isn’t right."

In an e-mailed comment, a Samsung spokesperson said the verdict was a loss for consumers, and promised the fight isn't over:

"Today’s verdict should not be viewed as a win for Apple, but as a loss for the American consumer. It will lead to fewer choices, less innovation, and potentially higher prices. It is unfortunate that patent law can be manipulated to give one company a monopoly over rectangles with rounded corners, or technology that is being improved every day by Samsung and other companies... This is not the final word in this case or in battles being waged in courts and tribunals around the world, some of which have already rejected many of Apple’s claims.”

Following the verdict, the jury chose not to speak to the throng of media outside the court building. Court staff escorted the nine jurors out of the building through a back exit.

Pretty close to what I was thinking was going to happen. This is not a "miscarriage of justice" or any of the other things people are throwing around. Apple, I think, made the better case (though both acted complete asshatish (using legal jargon, of course). The damages weren't what Apple wanted, but those were exaggerated figures anyway. Sad to say, this verdict is probably in line with the legal standard as it stands.

That being said, the courtroom is not the place where software patents will be sorted out. It's a legislative issue, not a judicial decision. Don't condemn the jury for applying the law as it stands rather than doing something wildly unlike, just because YOU would have liked it.

(Note: I'm not for the removal of all patents, but in software especially, they need to be wildly curtailed. I don't agree with all of the Apple patents, my point is simply that the law needs to be changed by the lawmakers, not a bunch of people who likely aren't qualified to make those decisions. I'm not sure why people want the kind of people who can't get out of jury duty making decisions about what should be legal.

Wow, the idiot jurors found every patent valid. We simply have a broken system... according to this court Apple has retroactively patented basic text parsing (ex. regex).

Er, right or wrong, the verdict appears carefully considered, so the "idiot" comment seems unnecessary.

I agree, idiot is the term

"technically illiterate" is much more accurate

Yeah well, I'd wager every one of them understands this case, the evidence and the issues better than you. This is not a "we accept everything that Apple says" verdict. You feel like "your team" lost, eh?They haven't even addressed Samsung's claims yet.

You'd lose that wager. Please stop with the personal attacks and stick to the topic.

It was a home match for Apple in California. The home team always has an advantage.

It has nothing to do with "home court" advantage. This post sums it up nicely:

Locke wrote:

109 Page instruction/verdict document done in less than 20 hours of "deliberation".

I'm betting the deliberation was "Apple is cool, lets just award them some money, mark some shit on this form and get home by 5".

Not that any of it matters since this will be in appearl for a few more years if not decades since Judge Koh's incompetence has given both sides ammunition for appeal.

It has everything to do with the jury's perception of the plaintiff/defendant. Almost always, in high-profile, public cases like these (the OJ trial, the Michael Jackson trial, the Casey Anthony trial), the jury will side with the more "famous" plaintiff/defendant. That's exactly what happened here.

It's because these dumbfuck jurors want to go the media after the trial, seen suckling on Apple's nuts.

Quit whining. This appears to be a balanced verdict from 9 people who have sat through a large amount of evidence. It hasn't all gone Apple's way and $1billion will not sink Samsung. Apple wanted Samsung's copying acknowledged and it has been acknowledged where the evidence supported the claim. Apple has to accept the decisions that went against it where the evidence wasn't there - notably the iPad's trade dress claims.

So you think that software that identifies a phone number in a text message is not obvious to someone skilled in the art? If you really believe that you are technically illiterate.

If you're going to deconstruct the patent, do it right.

Detect a phone number, provide a UI action indicator, a menu of action items, and a framework to hook the actions to other programs.

It would be like auto detecting file referenced in a screenshot of Explorer, doing the MIME type match from the icon image, and allowing you to open the said document from a link.

Agreed. To the original poster, remember that this patent was worked around by HTC. Anyway, the patent is overly broad. However, considering the state of software patents as they are today it stands up to scrutiny in that context.In any case I think the trade dress violations were more egregious and deserved severe punishment.

Pretty close to what I was thinking was going to happen. This is not a "miscarriage of justice" or any of the other things people are throwing around. Apple, I think, made the better case (though both acted complete asshatish (using legal jargon, of course). The damages weren't what Apple wanted, but those were exaggerated figures anyway. Sad to say, this verdict is probably in line with the legal standard as it stands.

That being said, the courtroom is not the place where software patents will be sorted out. It's a legislative issue, not a judicial decision. Don't condemn the jury for applying the law as it stands rather than doing something wildly unlike, just because YOU would have liked it.

(Note: I'm not for the removal of all patents, but in software especially, they need to be wildly curtailed. I don't agree with all of the Apple patents, my point is simply that the law needs to be changed by the lawmakers, not a bunch of people who likely aren't qualified to make those decisions. I'm not sure why people want the kind of people who can't get out of jury duty making decisions about what should be legal.

The real problem is the patent office. The vast majority of patents issued should have been laughed out (look at the rate of success for challengers).

I would disagree on software patents. Software is actually not patentable under US law since all software is math and you can not patent math. That's not my opinion, it's a fact that software IS math. Unfortunately 99% of the population doesn't understand this, but someone needs to push the case up through the court system

Wow, the idiot jurors found every patent valid. We simply have a broken system... according to this court Apple has retroactively patented basic text parsing (ex. regex).

Er, right or wrong, the verdict appears carefully considered, so the "idiot" comment seems unnecessary.

I agree, idiot is the term

"technically illiterate" is much more accurate

Yeah well, I'd wager every one of them understands this case, the evidence and the issues better than you. This is not a "we accept everything that Apple says" verdict. You feel like "your team" lost, eh?They haven't even addressed Samsung's claims yet.

You'd lose that wager. Please stop with the personal attacks and stick to the topic.

You're claiming that you have followed this case more closely than this jury? As for crying about personal attacks? You opened by saying the jury were idiots. Log off, get some perspective.

I knew Samsung was gonna lose pretty big and they probably deserve to with the current law so I have no real sympathy for them, they are going to have to payup. Patent reform desperately needs to happen though, will this case spur that at all or is it still years off?

Nobody wins in this case. I am an Apple fanboi and I believe that Apple is being a bully. Same way I would do it, but I also know it's not right. There should be a way of sharing patents maybe, for a fee of course. I also believe that there are some trade secrets that need to be off-limits to share. I am not smart enough to figure that part out, but it could work.

That leads to better products for everyone. Apple fans are going to buy Apple products. Android fans are going to buy Android. I have yet to use Jelly Bean on my Nexus S 4G because those damn CDMA providers drag their heels. I like Android too. It does great things on its own.

But yeah...lulz and butt-hurt all around for ... some people. It's on Apple!

I wonder if Apple will move from Samsung to suing Google now and claim damages based on the Android platform? After all... this is just a tactical victory over one set maker that does not in principle implicate the Android platform per se.

Wasn't the whole Android platform to be the target of Apple's thermonuclear war?